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Obituaries
Obituaries
Major David Eilenberg,
MB BS Lond Univ, FRCP, FRCPsych, DPM,
MRANZCP, FRANZCP
Formerly consultant
psychiatrist at Wembley,
Shenley and Northwick
Park Hospitals, UK,
Director of the Division
of Psychiatry at Auckland
Hospital, New Zealand
Eilenberg was an exceptionally able clinician with
administrative ability and an
intense interest in medical
ethics. He seemed the right
man for the psychiatric
services at Northwick Park Hospital and their liaison with the
Medical Research Council’s Clinical Research Centre when it
opened in 1970. However, New Zealand attracted him more
and he completed a successful career in Auckland, where he
migrated in 1975.
Eilenberg was born in 1925 at Pitsea, Essex, the older of
the two children of Sidney Eilenberg, a confectioner, and Annie
Eilenberg, ne´e Shube. Sidney Eilenberg came to England from
Poland in 1915. His wife and her parents had arrived from
Poland some years earlier. Major, a name deliberatively chosen
by his father for its distinctiveness and which caused life-long
confusion with the military rank, was educated at Hackney
Downs School, a London County Council grammar school,
formerly the Grocer’s Company’s School. The School’s alumni
include Steven Berkoff, John Bloom, Michael Caine, Arnold
Goodman and Harold Pinter, among many other notable men.
Eilenberg graduated MB BS (London) in 1948 from the
London Hospital Medical School. After house officer
appointments at the London Hospital, Eilenberg completed his
National Service (1953-1955) in the Medical Branch of the
Royal Air Force, serving in the Middle East with the rank of
squadron leader. He then became registrar and senior registrar
(1955-1961) at the Maudsley Hospital. The Maudsley was then
the world’s leading postgraduate school of psychiatry.
Eilenberg flourished. He published, as author or co-author, ten
papers based on research conducted during his training, a
remarkable achievement for a junior doctor. Notable were two
papers, one a study of 1200 emergency psychiatric admissions
over 1 year to St Francis’ Hospital Mental Observation Unit and
the other a comparison of 1930 and 1955 admissions to
Stamford House, a boys’ remand centre. Prominent in both are
his interest in medical aspects of psychiatry and in the
importance of administration in providing healthcare.
In 1956, showing an independence of thought, Eilenberg, a
secular Jew, convened a meeting of fellow junior doctors where
he proposed a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister
Eden’s conduct of the Suez Crisis. The motion was carried and
the news conveyed to Downing Street.
To broaden his experience Eilenberg spent 1961-1962 at
the Mayo Clinic as a staff psychiatrist. From here he published
three papers, one on liaison psychiatry which showed his
developing interest in this specialty. He joined the Mayo Clinic
Chapter of Sigma Xi, a society dedicated to promoting integrity
in science and engineering.
Eilenberg returned to England to be consultant
psychiatrist at Wembley Hospital (1963-1970) and then
Shenley and Northwick Park Hospitals (1970-1974). Northwick
Park Hospital was established in 1970 jointly by the Medical
Research Council (MRC) and the National Health Service
(NHS) to provide for clinical research. Here Eilenberg became
a key figure in establishing the new NHS psychiatric service
and ensuring its cooperation with the MRC Clinical Research
Centre where T. J. Crow was appointed head of the division of
psychiatry.
Such was Eilenberg’s stature that he became chairman of
the Ethical Committee for Northwick Park Hospital, a
committee which played a key role in facilitating clinical
research across all disciplines. A BMJ-sponsored discussion on
the ethics of clinical research between L. J. Witts, Nuffield
Professor of Medicine at Oxford, R. Williams, director of
liver research at King’s College Hospital and Eilenberg,
shows Eilenberg’s grasp of the principle issues. Essentially, he
argued for promoting a culture of ethical concern among all
professions involved in clinical research.
In 1974, to the astonishment of his colleagues, Eilenberg
said he and his family were moving to Auckland, New Zealand,
as he put it, ‘to go back 50 years in time’. He became Director
of the Division of Psychiatry at Auckland Hospital in 1975. His
superior clinical ability, grasp of medical administration and
mentorship of younger men were appreciated. And his advice
on psychiatric aspects of medical and especially neurological
illness was sought after. He retired from his hospital post in
1985 to work part time in the Geriatric Unit at Auckland
Hospital as a valued liaison psychiatrist until 2002. He also
had a private consulting practice at the Bexley Clinic in
Auckland where he continued until 2008.
He died in February 2012. After his death a colleague
remarked: ‘He made an enormous contribution to Auckland
psychiatry in the formal training of young psychiatrists and
as a role model for new consultants, encouraging participation
in administration, service delivery and negotiation with
management’.
Eilenberg’s chief interest, outside his family, was golf,
with a fairly average handicap. His regret was not to have come
to Auckland 10 years earlier.
Eilenberg married in 1955 Elizabeth Joan Rothwell, a
Senior Charge Nurse at the London Hospital and daughter of
Frederick Rothwell, sometime Vicar of Denmead, Hants. He is
survived by Elizabeth and their two sons, Richard, a dentist,
and Philip, an accountant, both in Auckland. Their third child,
Nigel, died in 2011.
Brian Barraclough
brian.barraclough@xtra.co.nz
doi: 10.1192/pb.bp.113.043380
181
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Obituaries
John Sutton Pippard
Formerly consultant
psychiatrist at Claybury
Hospital, fellow of
the Royal College
of Psychiatrists
John Pippard was a
consultant psychiatrist at
Claybury Hospital, Essex.
Born on 20 May 1919, he
died from pneumonia after
a fall at home on 21
December 2012.
John was the elder son
of Olive and A.J.S. (Sutton)
Pippard FRS who was
Professor of Civil Engineering at Imperial College London. He trained to be a doctor
at Cambridge and the London Hospital, qualifying in 1942 and
then gaining MRCP in the same year. After completing his
house jobs at the London Hospital, he served in the Royal Army
Medical Corps in north Africa and Italy, before taking charge of
the Medical Division of the British General Hospital in
Klagenfurt, Austria. There he met and married Kathleen, also a
doctor, in 1947. John trained initially to become a physician at
the London Hospital but then changed to psychiatry, training at
the London, Maudsley and St George’s hospitals. During his
training he was also a Fellow of Corpus Christi College in
Cambridge where he supervised students in physiology (19471950). His MD research (1955), for which he was awarded the
Copeman medal by Corpus Christi, examined factors that
influenced the likelihood of beneficial or adverse effects in
patients after modified leucotomy.
He became a consultant psychiatrist at Claybury Hospital
in 1955, where, encouraged by the Medical Superintendent
Stuart Harris, he and Dennis Martin and later Elisabeth
Shoenberg and Derek Kelsey were to transform a well-run
traditional mental hospital into a pioneering therapeutic
community. This was the first time such an experiment
involving a large mental hospital had been made in the UK.
This ‘Adventure in Psychiatry’ (also a book of the same title
published by Martin in 1963) led to a revolution in the
management of acutely ill patients, who now became active
participants in their own treatment. Its non-hierarchical group
approach, involving all the staff and patients in therapeutic
decision-making, appealed to John’s democratic spirit and his
deeply held Quaker beliefs.
John’s approach to psychiatry was eclectic but very much
inspired by psychodynamic thinking. He was an effective group
therapist, exercising his skills with acutely disturbed and
psychotic patients where his compassionate understanding
and humane approach, as well as his acute insights, brought
relief to patients and inspired generations of trainees, such as
ourselves. Many years after retirement patients continued to
write to him expressing their gratitude for his help, and he
responded comfortingly to all their letters in his very legible
and elegant script. In a letter by John to one of us (L.F.) in
2008 about a paper and book on therapeutic groups in acute
units (written by L.F.), John’s modesty, as well as his natural
talents, shone through: ‘You said I should have written about it
182
myself and I acknowledge the dereliction. The conditions I was
working in were, as you know, very different from what you
have to cope with. I had no training in psychotherapy and flew
by the seat of my pants. I did not find reading about psychotherapy or groups particularly helpful - if anything it interfered
in my spontaneity! As I read your paper I became painfully
aware of many of my shortcomings and missed opportunities.
However, I did not try and teach systematically but hoped that
staff and patients would absorb something useful from
participating in the community. Claybury in the 50s and 60s
was a great place to work and evidently involved and inspired a
great many people who took their experience all over the
world. I’m glad I was part of the Adventure in Psychiatry.’
At the end of his time at Claybury he worked briefly with
patients with intellectual disability at Leytonstone House.
He retired in 1979. He was made FRCP in 1966 and became
FRCPsych (Foundation) in 1972. After his retirement he
became a research fellow for the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
There he made an important national survey of the use of ECT
in the UK, published in 1981 as ‘Electro-convulsive treatment
in Great Britain’. This report highlighted inadequate practice
of ECT in many places and led to major changes that John
documented in a subsequent audit in 1991. He was also
a Commissioner for the Mental Health Act Commission
(1983-1986).
In retirement he stayed very active, enjoying looking after
the large garden of his beautiful Regency house in Woodford,
where he and his wife happily entertained friends and colleagues.
He was a keen amateur musician and continued to play the cello
well on into his 80s. John had a cheerful and optimistic
disposition and when for reasons of physical frailty he had to
move into a residential home he quickly adapted to this new
environment: he spent the last 2 years of his life contentedly at
Quaker House, where he was near his daughter and where he
soon made new friends. He was predeceased by Kathleen, who
was a family planning doctor, in 2005 and he leaves four
children and nine grandchildren, of whom he was very proud.
Leonard Fagin & Peter Shoenberg
doi: 10.1192/pb.bp.113.043406
Norman Kreitman
Formerly psychiatrist
and suicide expert
Norman Kreitman was an
urbane and cultured man;
a psychiatrist, philosopher
and poet. He strode the
world stage as a suicide
researcher, winning the
Distinguished Research
Award from the American
Society for Suicidology in
1987. At this time he was
Director of the Medical
Research Council (MRC)
Unit for Epidemiological
Psychiatry in Edinburgh, where he oversaw research into
suicide, depression in women and alcohol consumption. He is
the person who coined the term ‘parasuicide’, a recognition,
COLUMNS
Obituaries
not acknowledged at the time, that most episodes of self-harm
are not attempts at suicide.
A Londoner by birth, Norman qualified as a doctor in 1950
from the University of London. He worked in medicine at the
Metropolitan Hospital in London and spent time as a
researcher at the Forlanni Institute in Rome, Italy, before finally
deciding on a career in psychiatry, training at the Maudsley
Hospital in London. In 1971, he moved to Edinburgh, where he
lived for the rest of his life. He was Foundation Editor of Social
Psychiatry during this time. He retired from the MRC Unit when
it closed in 1990.
Unlike many academics who, on retirement, continue in
other academic or clinical posts, Norman put psychiatry behind
him and with great ease. Instead, he turned to his lifelong
interests in poetry and philosophy. He immersed himself in this
creative work, publishing four volumes of poetry and a number
of academic papers in philosophy journals. He was a very
keen fisherman and remained so until shortly before his
death. He took part in the Edinburgh International Festival
with great gusto and would be seen at morning concerts in
various venues, while the Usher Hall was his evening haunt.
Conversation with Norman was always stimulating but he too
was a wonderful listener, perhaps influenced by his interest in
psychotherapy.
Norman was a willing supervisor to those of us whom he
mentored, yet he never reprimanded or chastised. His capacity
for clear thinking around methodological problems in research
was a tool he used to great effect when guiding us in our
projects. Even before it was acceptable in those aspiring to
high academia, he understood that some of his researchers
should, at times, work from home if family required this.
His wife Susan was his great companion and they were
warm hosts to a stream of doctors and other mental health
researchers working in the MRC Unit, whom they entertained
in their home. As the years went by, Norman and Susan
became very regular hosts to my family, with Norman advising
my son as he wrote his Master’s dissertation. Two of Norman’s
papers, published in Metaphilosophy in 2011, are cited in it.
The onset of cancer a number of years ago did not curtail
Norman’s cultural activities and he continued to attend
concerts and to write. Norman died at his home on 15
December 2012 at the age of 85 surrounded by his loving
family. He is survived by his wife Susan, two children, Julia and
Matthew, and four grandchildren. He will be deeply missed by
all of us who had the great privilege of knowing him.
And tomorrow night the forms will return
As always, when they and this ageing man
Honour once more the cherished youth
Who strode through halls, could run upstairs.1
1
Kreitman N. Casanova’s 72nd Birthday. In Dancing in the Dark: New and
Selected Poems. Norman Kreitman, 2010.
Patricia Casey
doi: 10.1192/pb.bp.113.043521
183
John Sutton Pippard
Leonard Fagin and Peter Shoenberg
The Psychiatrist Online 2013, 37:182.
Access the most recent version at DOI: 10.1192/pb.bp.113.043406
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